Learn! Learn! Learn! Anda Buševica reviews New Riga Theater’s production “Cordelia’s Land”

Publicity photo (Agnese Zeltinas).

Anda Buševica, “Kultūrzīme”, JSC “Latvijas Mediji”

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In the production of the New Riga Theater “Land of Cordelia” you have the opportunity to meet the creators of the theater, who are on fire.

“I have a rich imagination,” says Vizma Gūtmane, a Shakespeare scholar played by Guna Zariņa, in the play “Cordelia’s Land” at the New Riga Theater. She thoroughly read Shakespeare’s play “King Lear” until she began to guess where on the map of Wales might be the plot of land that Lear bequeathed and later took away from her most beloved land. his three daughters, Cordelia. Plucked from the map, the patch of land looks small, but it’s shaped like a heart. Vizma Gūtmane wants to go there, try to experience and understand something special with the help of imagination and erudition, so she has now submitted a project to a cultural fund there. It is rejected and Vizma Gutmane comes to personally explain to the foundation officer why her project is not relevant and unnecessary. In the safety of the desk, she meets former student Linards Puķīti, played by Matīss Ozols.

The dramaturgical material of the show “Kordelias zeme” was created jointly by the creators of the show, in addition to the two actors, also the director of the show Pēteris Krylovs and assistant director Gerds Lapoška. In the show, the opposite of youth and age is reversed: the young man has escaped into the parallel reality of the small screen and the authority of the official, while a scientist who appears to be in real life, in full tourist gear, plants a tent on a rock during a storm. I too have a rich imagination and can imagine that such a balance of power might be akin to the experience of a teacher who must seek to nurture a generation of Harry Potter readers up the ladder of Shakespearean fantasy, drawing them into that square of knowledge at heart shape that has itself been important throughout life. Director Pēteris Krilovs used his experience as a teacher in the previous JRT production “Dublinesi Miera iela”, and the dramaturgical material of the previous performance was also created in a similar way – interweaving everyone’s life experience with the classics in one common conversation.

In the “Land of Cordelia” everyone has a good time: theater critics who do not try out new playgrounds, but only watch “old plays by old directors”. The audience discusses how cruel Lear has been this time and how Cordelia has suffered at the buffet over the razor. Scientists whose writings go unread, public officials who celebrate their safety and status. Even Shakespeare, whose writing not only today, but Leo Tolstoy also found a little funny.

In the first part of the work, an intellectually fascinating discussion on and around King Lear. How does Shakespeare weave mythological imagery with Christian values? Could there be something sacred in Cordelia’s allotted land? What wisdom is in the king’s madness? In the wilderness? The emerging themes together contain the ebb and flow of the acting, it’s like a score that slowly coils what is happening on stage like a coiled spring. Which is made clear, in my opinion, in the brilliantly acted grave scene. How can we talk about Shakespeare without the grave scene? If we draw parallels to ‘Dublinites’, where an image of a very real cafe on Miera Street was used to bring the classic to life, now it’s the Great Tombs, also close to the JRT. Fragments of Shakespearean quotations resonate in jazz waves, Guna Zariņš dances a tango worthy of Federico Fellini’s “Cabirie Nights” under the lights of a passing car. But the madness of King Lear comes to life in the young clerk’s recollections of a personal experience, and changes the scope and pace of the conversation for the rest of the play.

In the second act, the previously mentioned themes of Lear are now to be lived, full of human content and tenderness. In the program you can read that while she was preparing for this performance, Guna Zariņa walked the extremely difficult King’s Trail somewhere beyond the Arctic Circle. Perhaps her experience is at the beginning of the second part, when there is a marquee on the stage and around it a spectacularly beautiful storm of madmen. Mathis Ozol’s highlight in the show is reading poetry by Shakespeare’s contemporary John Donne. It’s always a treat for me – hearing great lyrics from the stage, but one has to ask the question, which is actually the basis of the whole performance. It is a kind of choice and also the result of hard work, when the lyrics of classics of very good quality and scale really get into the bloodstream and expand the scale of real life. However, how can an outsider, whose authority is Potter, have a part alongside the other’s source of inspiration: Shakespeare? In the second part of the play, I mentally understand that the actors have experienced something, explored, but I do not know their history and feelings, so after the heightened tension of the first act, my attention gradually relaxes.

Cordelia’s heart-shaped earth. The land of the heart. I think these are all essential texts that a person accumulates and survives throughout life. JRT’s repertoire has become very predictable lately, “Cordelia’s land” is also wonderful because I met again at the JRT theater creators who are on fire, who are restless, who solicit conversation.

INVESTIGATION

“Land of Cordelia”, a play on William Shakespeare’s play “King Lear” at the New Riga Theater

 Director Pēteris Krilovs, artist Kristīne Abika, assistant director – Gerds Lapoška.

 Starring: Guna Zariņa and Matīss Ozols.

 Upcoming performances: January 13, 14, 15.

Themes